What’s Up in the Cloud: Google Acquires Fitbit, Cloud AI Translation Updates, BYOIP, More

While it already feels like winter in some parts of the country, there’s been no freeze on the number of announcements about Google Cloud Platform (GCP) over the past few weeks. So what’s new in the world of Google Cloud? Less will get lost in translation, increased functionality for developers in BigQuery, new acquisitions, and more. Read our round-up of the latest product updates and news from Google Cloud and Maven Wave below:

• Google to acquire Fitbit: Google has announced that it will acquire Fitbit, which makes wearable devices such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. Fitbit began using Google’s Healthcare API in 2018 to enable patients to share the data collected on Fitbit devices with their healthcare providers. 
• Getting hybrid-cloud ready with Anthos: Before you can take full advantage of Anthos, you need to take the proper steps to ensure all of the pieces are in place for it to run effectively. Maven Wave presents an upcoming webinar on the “5 Steps to Getting Hybrid-Cloud Ready with Anthos” on November 21 at 1:00 pm ET. Register now. 
• Updates to Cloud AI translation services: Along with making AutoML translate generally available, Google has also introduced two versions of the Translation API: advanced and basic. The easy-to-use basic version is designed for customers using translation services in chat applications, social media, and gaming. The advanced version offers a Glossary feature that enables users to define brand and domain-specific terms. 
• How Bitly migrated quickly with Google’s BYOIP addresses: Google offers global support for companies to “Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP) addresses” when migrating to the cloud. This alleviates the common challenge of managing the migration of IP addresses when moving to the cloud. Bitly used this feature to solve issues with hard-coded IPs delaying migration and the costs of legacy networking infrastructure. 
• Google develops Skaffold tool for Kubernetes build automation: Google has developed a tool called Skaffold to eliminate the need for developers to redeploy an application every time there is a small change to their code. Skaffold watches for changes to local source code and then rebuilds and redeploys applications automatically. 
• Audio for Google Slides rollout: By the end of November, all Google Slides users will have the ability to add audio to their presentations. Specifically, users will be able to embed MP3 and WAV audio files from Drive directly into slides to enhance their presentations. 
• Guide to building cloud-based healthcare solutions: Google released a blog post detailing how healthcare companies can build secure solutions in the cloud. The guide includes information on how to build HIPAA-compliant solutions, a Google Cloud Healthcare Data Protection Toolkit, steps on how to ingest medical records and de-identify medical data, and more. 
• AutoML comes to Kaggle platform: Kaggle, Google’s online community for data scientists, is getting an AutoML integration. This new integration will enable 3.5 million Kaggle users to ingest data from their SDK directly into Kaggle Notebooks to then be able to run AutoML. Additionally, Google plans to offer GCP credits throughout the year to Kaggle users to subsidize the cost of using AutoML. 
• Scripting and stored procedures in BigQuery: Bringing scripting to the BigQuery platform enables developers to run queries in a sequence or conduct multi-step tasks with control flow within the platform. And with new stored procedures capabilities in BigQuery, developers can also save those scripts to run again in the future.  

Come back in a few weeks for more updates from Maven Wave and Google Cloud. In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more about the capabilities of GCP, subscribe to our newsletter.

As the two-time Google Cloud Services Partner of the Year, Maven Wave works with leading companies to make the shift to digital with solutions that are agile, rooted in analytics, and built in the cloud. Contact us to set up a time to speak with our experts.